I always find Holy Saturday an especially imposing day, spiritually. It's the thought of the empty Tabernacles all over the world. The absent Presence.

I'm feeling something similar as I contemplate the sede vacante. How different an empty chair is from other kinds of emptiness! A chair is meant to hold a person. And this is not just any chair, but a very paticular chair—a chair that represents a sacred office, and an unbroken line.

It's emptiness is awesome, in the truest sense of that word, which includes an element of "fear-inducing."

I'm glad it will be filled soon. I'm also grateful for the way its period of emptiness fills out our sense of its fullness of meaning.

This reminds me of Alice Von Hildebrand's words at the lecture you and Jules organized in West Chester a few years ago. In her talk she said something about how children needed beautiful toys and beautiful dolls. It's interesting how hearing a little comment like that is confirmed in the response this has gotten online. It makes me feel alive in a radiant way when I see the intersection of our beliefs with beauty and life.

Its so insane that the original dolls look the way they do to begin with! The more I think about it the more offensive it is. And yes, I love everything about this family and it gives me hope that this has gotten so much attention.

We should be interested in others' feelings, because they reveal the person in a way that his words don't. But we're not entitled to another person's feelings. We don't get to demand that he reveal himself to us. We have to win his trust.